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were low. Staff at triage, where life-and-death decisions are made, determined that it was more sensible to load U.S.-bound airplanes with the wounded who were likely to live. "They wanted to send people who had a chance to make it," Bartlett said. "And that's definitely the right thing to do. I had already died twice." PHYSICAL SCARS, INVISIBLE WOUNDSAgainst the odds, Bartlett lived, and he arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here five days after absorbing the blast. Upon arrival, clinical staff brought him out of his drug-induced coma, but a medical complication caused his vital signs to flatline. He died for a third time that week. "I just think God's got other plans for me," he said, with a hint of self-effacement. At the hospital's intensive care unit, Bartlett soon was reunited with his father, mother and brother, Shawn. From the moment he regained consciousness, he recalled, he was distrusting of everybody in the room he didn't recognize as kin. To the medical and nursing staff, he was combative. He insisted that Shawn remain in the room with him.
"I wouldn't let my brother leave, because I knew he was the strongest. If I was in a situation, I knew our chances of survival were best if he was around," Bartlett recalled. "I was still in combat mode at Describing his wounds, Bartlett used his hand, which almost lost three fingers to shrapnel, to point to the areas of his face that were destroyed. "This was all gone," he said, tracing the scar tissue running along his left cheek. "I've got a titanium jaw from here to here. Skin grafts." But in addition to the visible signs of the explosion, it was instantly clear at Walter Reed that the attack inflicted invisible wounds. As Bartlett's vital status grew less dire, classic characteristics of post-traumatic stress disorder emerged. Three major categories of PTSD symptoms are avoidance of reminders of the traumatic event, re-experiencing symptoms and hyper-arousal. Each individual displays a unique combination of effects, but the common thread among those afflicted is the daily impairment of normal functioning. "It's just things you encounter over there [in Iraq]," said Bartlett, describing his symptoms. "Once you've been living that for five, six, seven months, or a year, or many years, you tend to have the same reactions when you come home." At home, thousands of miles from Iraq, Bartlett couldn't sit with his back to the door. He looked over his shoulder constantly, calculating his surroundings. He viewed life through the prism of shifting threat assessments. For the man who at one point knew no stranger, people he didn't recognize had become more distant than strangers -- they were potential enemies. The road offered no respite for the scout sniper: "White-knuckling every time you go under a bridge or an underpass, losing your temper because somebody's tailgating you or driving like an idiot, cutting you off," he said, describing an average driving experience after returning home. "Those things are really big to us, because that's how they try to kill us with a vehicle bomb." |
Ironically, Bartlett's PTSD diagnosis came from one of the least-expected sources. "While I was in the intensive care unit, he said, 'You have PTSD,'" Bartlett recalled his father telling him. A Vietnam War veteran who suffered from PTSD and never sought treatment, Bartlett's father was one of the earliest and strongest voices pushing his son toward therapy. The sergeant said his enlistment in 2003 reopened old wounds for his father. "Not until the last few years when this war broke out did he start getting bad symptoms because I had joined up," Bartlett said. "He started recalling a lot of those old memories that he never dealt with, that he's been dealing with. He pushed himself to go. He pushed me to get in." The younger Bartlett resolved to take advantage of the mental health care offered to today's warfighters that didn't exist for earlier generations. The closest semblance of therapy available for veterans of previous conflicts was the Veterans of Foreign Wars centers, Bartlett said. "That was their outlet," he said of the VFW. "There wasn't counseling back then, so those places were great. But the problem was that they were drinking the whole time while they were doing it. So you end up self-medicating." Bartlett said he sees some of his own generation returning from combat and relying on self-medication, the act of taking therapy into one's own hands by using, and often misusing, drugs or alcohol. The sergeant eschewed this form of escapism, deciding instead to face his demons head-on. "It's something I had to battle," he said of PTSD. "That was my constant fight." FIRST STEP INTO SOCIETYFor the sociable, gregarious Bartlett, one of his first challenges was being around people again. His first entree into public after Iraq was through a foundation that sponsors Friday night dinners for wounded veterans at restaurants around Washington. "That's our first step out into society: it's a crawl, walk, run kind of scenario. We all go out wounded together with tubes hanging out of us, looking like a mob of disabled freaks," he said, laughing. "We enjoy each other's company and have a nice dinner." On his first night out, however, Bartlett had to forgo the meal. "I couldn't eat or anything. I was drooling - this was all missing," he said, pointing to his jaw. "And my teeth were gone. But it was just about getting me out and used to it."
"It was kind of like the initial healing process of meeting people and realizing that I'm going to be OK," he said. "It's a long road, but you get through it." The sergeant attended one-on-one counseling before beginning group therapy at Walter Reed. During group sessions, he and other veterans swapped war stories and shared the problems associated with living everyday life amid the haze of post- Bartlett discovered that what he was feeling wasn't unique. In fact, these bull sessions helped him identify PTSD's traits, and focus on undoing them. 1 2 3 Next Page >> |
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![It's just things you encounter over there [in Iraq]. Once you've been living that for five, six, seven months, or a year, or many years, you tend to have the same reactions when you come home.](images/bartlett_quote1d.gif)
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